


Life is What You Make It, Unless the Gods Make Yours for You

by MagitekUnit05953234



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Loss of Bodily Autonomy, Magical Scars, Post Titan Covenant, The Astrals are Terrible, playing fast and loose with canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 14:58:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16177451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagitekUnit05953234/pseuds/MagitekUnit05953234
Summary: “Hey,” Gladio sits beside his charge, his leg just barely pressing against Noctis’s. “How’re you doing?”“I don't know.”





	Life is What You Make It, Unless the Gods Make Yours for You

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "glowing eyes" from Tumblr user raneam-o1's gothic prompt list.  
> Honestly, I will always be a little mad that Noctis’s eyes were originally going to glow at night (all night) and they took it out.

When Noctis earned Titan’s favor, something in him shifted. His body began to change, warping under the might of a power that no mortal but Noctis could wield. Unnaturally divine without any say in the matter. 

Gladio finds Noctis sitting on a boulder outside the chocobo post staring at his phone. It's held up in his hands, as if he's taking a picture of the night beyond. 

“Hey,” Gladio sits beside his charge, his leg just barely pressing against Noctis’s. “How’re you doing?”

“I don't know,” Noctis lowers the phone. The front-facing camera is on. 

Gladio has a passing knowledge of the Cosmogony. He knows the Six, their domains, their mortal demises. He probably knows the most about Titan and Ramuh —the former because of the supposed blessing he gave to the Amicitia line in the days of the Founder King, and the former because of the legends Gladio’s mother brought to Lucis from Galahd when she was little. 

No folktale or legend prepared Gladio for facing a god, and they sure as hell aren’t helping him when it comes to supporting Noctis through whatever he must be dealing with now. “Are you… alright? Are the headaches gone?”

“Yeah. They’re gone,” Noctis spends a few moments banishing and resummoning his phone, barely letting the flashes of crystalline magic fade before repeating the cycle. “I just. I don’t know what—”

Noctis shakes his head, cutting himself off with the movement, and Gladio catches an odd flash of purple. Before Gladio can ask, Noctis turns to face Gladio head-on. 

His eyes are glowing. There’s no downplaying that fact. They’re red-violet, edging on some shade of pink, and are definitely glowing. 

“The hell?” Gladio has to resist the urge to take Noctis’s face in his hands to get a closer look. 

“From Titan I guess,” Noctis scoffs, running the back of his hand over his eyes. “It's been going on since the sun went down. I don't know how to make it stop.”

“Maybe it doesn’t,” Gladio suggests, forcibly drawing his eyes away from Noct’s newfound divine mutation. “Or maybe it just goes away on its own after a while.”

“Gods, I hope it does,” Noctis grimaces. “I didn’t ask for this shit. They’re my eyes —not theirs. Not yet, anyway.”

“Right,” Gladio nods. He isn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He can’t —and shouldn’t— protect Noctis from the consequences of following his destiny, but gods if Gladio doesn’t almost want to when he sees Noct like this, battered around and stretched and changed by the whims of the Six. Supposedly it’s meant to be, but seeing the way Noctis curls into himself and turns his face away from Gladio is telling enough of what it’s like. 

Gladio is drawn out of his musing by Noct messing with his armguard, jostling Gladio is the meantime. 

“His blessing. Titan’s blessing? They call it the Mark of the Archean,” Noctis pauses, sends a luminous glance Gladio’s way. Breathes. “Guess why”

Without waiting for a reply, Noctis strips off his armguard and shoves his wrist in Gladio’s direction, looking away as if it’ll stop existing if he doesn’t see it for long enough. 

To put it simply: there’s a band around Noctis’s wrist like a bracelet, except it’s set into his skin. It’s part of his body. Symbols, script that Gladio knows but can’t decipher, glowing just the same shade as Noct’s eyes. It’s a name, a title, written in the language of the Astrals. The same symbols are —or were— engraved on the grip of Clarus’s shield. 

“I can’t read this shit,” Noctis pulls his arm back, dropping his hand in his lap. “But I know what it says. Landforger.”

It takes a second for the meaning of that to process.

The glow of the brand, because it  _ is _ a brand, it marks Noctis as property, as the Astrals’ toy, flares up when Noct’s hands curl into fists. “It’s not enough that they take my father. Your father, our city. Our home. None of that’s enough for the gods—” Noctis’s voice breaks.  “They have  _ change me _ , too.”

When Noct wakes up in the morning, his eyes are the same blue they’ve always been. Maybe a little duller. His wrist isn’t covered, and the brand looks almost like scarring now that it’s not putting off ominous light. Maybe it  _ is _ scarring. 

Gladio doesn’t want to think too hard about that, but he does anyway, seeking out opportunities to get just one more look at Noct’s first step into a life of giving up everything for the gods. Noct’s mouth sets into a grim line when he catches Gladio looking, and the next time he tries to sneak a peek he meets the leather of Noct’s armguard instead. 

When the sun goes down after a hard day’s work tracking Deadeye, Noctis’s training forms in the clearing some fifty yards from that night’s campsite turn into a frenzied dance of magic and sword and rage. Even if Noctis didn’t have a flashlight clipped to his jacket, Gladio would be able to find Noctis in the darkness by following those two pinpricks of red-violet in the darkness. 

Gladio turns around and lets Noct have his outburst in peace. Gladio knows full well what it’s like to have no control over what you’re made for, and if he ever figured out a single comforting thought about it that wasn’t about duty or honor or being useful he’d offer it. 

The only soothing words Gladio possesses are his father’s, but Gladio doesn’t want to steal them and ruin them. Noctis wouldn’t appreciate platitudes meant for Shields, anyway.

Thunder rumbles in the distance, and Gladio wonders if that’s Ramuh calling. 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Twitter [@compromisedunit](https://mobile.twitter.com/compromisedunit)!


End file.
